People who've read more of him than me - everything I've read by him has, to some extent, been centred around societies or sections of societies that are in the process of reconstructing (or constructing) themselves, or at least beyond the bounds of 'normal' society and ripe for the creation of new structures and new myths... is this ongoing throughout his writing, or is it just the stuff I've read?
Hehe, with your name I thought you'd be the most eminent Pynchon scholar around these parts...
Anyways, I've read most of Pynchon's output - all the novels and a lot of essays/articles etc (most of which you can find online and I heartily recommend if you're a fan of his stuff), and i'd agree that that idea is evident throughout all of his novels. However, i'm not sure if these societies/sociological groups etc actually ARE changing - i think it's a lot more about the
possibility of change, and that possibility being neutralised by the "Them" who is always refers to. He is always dealing with form and chaos... so much of his stuff, if not all of it, takes place beyond the bounds of "normal" society - as someone upthread said, he's often concerned with the history of American dissent. Time is a big factor (he often capitalises it as "Time") and the way he grounds his stories in these historical settings is obviously important as he's writing in the context of times of great change - WW2, birth of the USA, etc. And at these moments there's always scope for change and renewal. Of course in GR we see "Them" using the chaos of WW2 to tighten their grip, but it's important that at these junctures the potential for alternatives is there, glimpses of the road(s) not taken...and this ties in with all the multiple universe stuff in Against the Day... And of course you can relate all of this back to entropy, which is so prominent in all his work. Though there's a big difference between thermodynamic entropy and information entropy - summed up nicely by someone on the Pynchon listserve here:
"Pynchon criticizes the misuse of the thermodynamic entropy model most effectively by contrasting it against the information theory model of entropy. Both models mandate a natural tendency towards disorder, but with completely opposite effects. Instead of chaotic activity leading to uniformity, stillness, and death, information dispersal leads to increased heterogeneity, unpredictability, the nonlinearity at the heart of our "mindless pleasures" [the working title for GR] "
But I'm certainly no authority. I've been a casual member of the pynchon listserve thing for a few years, which contains a whole raft of people, far more intelligent than me, discussing his work in EXTREMELY fine detail - and so i'm always wary of trying to summarise his stuff at all, as I know that it would provoke a lot of disagreement from those who really know what they're talking about. The thing i like about it him the most ultimately is his humanism - you get such a sense of compassion in his novels underneath all the trickery, word games, songs, jokes, conspiracies, paranoia etc etc. And compassion for everyone, not just the 'good guys'. It's been widely commented that the overall tone of his writing is "sad, but not despairing" and i'd definitely agree with that. An absurd world, looked at hopefully and cheerfully. Mason & Dixon is probably the best example of his compassion, i'd say - possibly why it's my favourite.